Successful outcomes rarely occur on accident or by chance. For the vast majority of time, given an equal field of players, the team with the best coach / leader / musher is going to win. Being the best coach / leader / musher starts with your strategy.
Like it or not, as the leader, you are the ‘Head’ of your team. As the head, there are many things you can delegate to your team. I am a believer in the leader handling those things ONLY the leader can handle and mentoring your team to perform the rest – not out of a sense or intention to ‘lighten’ your load but to enable you as the leader to prepare for the next level of growth, performance, achievement and problem resolution. Strategy is an area that I believe you need to own. Your team is counting on you to ‘Know the way, Show the way, and Go the way.’
You may say, “Strategy is not my strength – implementation is my strength.” Great! Now spend time developing your skill as a strategist – your people need to believe that you ‘Know the way’. It lets them run free and hard. They can run free because their minds are not cluttered with doubt over is this the right direction and with surety (confidence) they can run hard.
I am not suggesting that you create your strategy in a vacuum – that you come down from your Ivory Tower with the predetermined strategy and hand it to your team as if it were the 10 Commandments.
Strategy involves multiple aspects and the best results come from you AND the team. Remember, there are 2 sure-fire ways to fail – Take council from Nobody and Take council from Everybody.
To help Leaders grow and/or gain clarity with strategy, I built into the book and training, “When Running to win remember to use the “RACE’ Strategy.”
R – Ready
A – Action
C – Checkpoints
E – Evolve
This week we’re going to take a deeper dive each day with these components, but for today here’s the thought:
How good am I at strategy? Am I good at filtering out the wrong things to do – so I can gain clarity about the right things to go? Have I done the work, yet, to know my team so I know the right strategy for my team?
I know it’s Monday – your sled is full and the race may have started hot and heavy this morning – so shorter post from me. I enjoy being a part of your journey and adding value to your team – shoot me an email, I’m glad to help! RACE on!
